Five Ways To Attract Talent In Today’s Tough Job Market

The hunt for the most skilled candidates is highly competitive, giving the advantage to job seekers and forcing HR recruiters to figure out creative new ways to attract candidates.

The US unemployment rate was just 4% in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with 304,000 jobs added during that month alone. “Pretty much anyone who wants to work is already working,” says Jeff Haynes, director of human capital management (HCM) consulting for Baker Tilly. “Today, the success of recruiters rests on their ability to market and sell the opportunities they have available.”

Workers at the Wind Farm Monitoring Project in Alberta, Canada, represent some of the highly skilled workers who are in demand today.

Courtesy of Stantec

In interviews with Haynes and other HR experts, they shared the following five ways innovative companies can win the battle for great talent.

1. Think like a marketer.

Haynes suggests that HR pros take a page from the marketing playbook and promote open positions based on the factors most important to job seekers.

“Younger candidates a few years out of college are interested in a company’s commitment to diversity and sustainability. They’re looking for opportunities to volunteer and better the community,” he says. “More-experienced people are interested in striking a balance between work and family and looking for companies that offer day care and robust 401K plans.”

Oracle Vice President Cara Capretta suggests that recruiters tap current employees’ social media communities to get the word out about open positions. “Your employees can be your best marketers,” she says.

2. Cast a wider net.

When Jim Strickland took office as mayor of the City of Memphis in 2016, he made good on a campaign promise to strengthen the public safety team by hiring more firefighters, police officers, and 911 operators.

One of the first decisions of Strickland’s new chief HR officer, Alexandria Smith, was to replace the city’s on-premises HR applications with a modern, cloud-based application suite, Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud. The city started with the performance management, compensation workbench, and learning management modules and will be going live with benefits and talent acquisition in April 2019.

That platform positioned the HR team to hire and onboard emergency workers more efficiently through social sourcing and an improved workflow.

Smith plans to use the talent acquisition platform to reach more candidates and enhance HR’s capability to post openings on a wider variety of job boards, including those focused on public safety. Her team also plans to post videos showing what life as a Memphis police officer and firefighter is like, posting them on YouTube, Facebook, and other social media platforms.

Since 2016, the city has hired 363 new firefighters and 419 new police officers, resulting in a net gain of public safety workers for the first time in seven years.

3. Simplify the application process.

Elias Medina, director of recruitment and training for Arizona Federal Credit Union remembers how he used to weigh down job fair attendees with brochures and application packets. Since the credit union switched to online applications using Oracle HCM Cloud, it draws a crowd of hopeful applicants.

While a recent study by the job site Indeed.com found that many job applicants abandon online applications because they’re too long and confusing, Arizona Federal Credit Union recruiters stand by with tablets to help job seekers fill out, sign, and submit employment applications electronically—on the spot.

“The candidate leaves the job fair thinking, ‘Wow, I got to speak to someone from the credit union face to face, they took my application, and I received a notification that they’ll follow up.’” Medina says. “Our approach tells applicants we’re interested in talking to them and, yes, we are a great place to work.”

4. Broaden your definition of the ideal job candidate.

Esterline, a global manufacturer of specialty aeronautics and defense industry components, employs a rare breed of highly trained engineers and technicians. To attract that kind of specialized talent, Esterline has launched an effort to pull in more military veterans, notes Shahbaz Alibaig, senior director of HR operations, HR technology, and global talent acquisition.

To reach those specialized people, Alibaig’s HR team plans to publicize its open positions on Military.com, where a widget developed by Monster.com “translates” military skills into civilian nomenclature so that candidates can easily identify which Esterline jobs match their experience.

Says Oracle’s Capretta, “This is a really important part of modern recruiting, to focus on transferable skills rather than job titles.”

Skilled workers repair a blade on a turbine at a wind farm in Alberta, Canada.

Courtesy of Stantec

5. Build a robust talent pipeline using current employees.

Stantec, an architecture and engineering firm with 22,000 employees in remote locations worldwide, deployed the talent acquisition module of Oracle HCM Cloud. The cloud-based software helps Stantec recruiters manage employee referrals. This year it will roll out the talent management module to help current employees build their talent profiles, set their career goals, and chart a path to meet them.Whatever job you choose to grow into—if you want to be the CEO or if you want to be the lead on a very cool project that will start in two or three years—you’ll have a path to follow,” says Angela Moore, Stantec’s HR solution delivery leader. “Now no employee’s career aspirations will be overlooked.”